38 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



while just beside it, perhaps, the Habenaria psy- 

 codes gets its misty delicacy of purple bloom from 

 the same source. With plants as with people it is 

 not that on which we feed nor the spot on which we 

 stand that counts in the final moulding of charac- 

 ter. Some subtle essence, some fire of spirit 

 within the orchid makes its bloom. Some grosser 

 ideal within the milkweed matures in the dull, 

 sticky umbels. Thus within the town, attending 

 the same schools, and fed by the same butcher and 

 baker, one boy grows up a poet and another a yokel. 

 Even in the same family you may see it, for the 

 milkweeds are not all alike. Along the dry hill- 

 sides the Asclepias tuberosa gives us bright orange 

 flowers, exudes little if any stickiness, and even 

 gets a better name from the botanist, being called 

 the butterfly-weed. 



But however gross and homely the milkweed 

 blooms the butterflies find rich pasturage there 

 and sip and cling till they fairly fall off in satiety. 

 Winging to the milkweed out of the chestnut and 

 maple shade of the deep wood comes Papilio tur- 

 nus, striped tigerwise with rich yellow and black. 

 Out of the long saw-edged grass that grows long 



